Tebhaga, Punnapra-Vayalar, Telengana ...

THIS was also the peak period for the Communist-led peasant movement. Soon after the Calcutta communal killings of August, in September 1946, the Bengal unit of Kisan Sabha launched the popular Tebhaga agitation demanding two-thirds crop share for the sharecropper. North Bengal emerged as the storm centre of this militant and immensely popular peasant upsurge. Apart from Thakurgaon sub-division of Dinajpur and neighbouring areas of Jalpaiguri, Rangpur and Malda districts of North Bengal, the tebhaga movement also acquired great depth in Mymensingh (Kishoreganj), Midnapur (Mahisadal, Sutahata and Nandigram) and 24 Parganas (Kakdwip) districts in the rest of Bengal.

In the Travancore-Cochin belt of Kerala, communists had already developed a strong base among coir factory workers, fishermen, toddy-tappers and agricultural labourers. In 1946 as the rulers of this princely slate started toying with the idea of introducing the so-called American model of presidential system,  communists vowed to throw the American model into the Arabian sea. Severe repression was unleashed on communist activist in Alleppey region. Against this backdrop a political general strike began in the Alleppey-Shertalai area from 22 October and on October 24, a partially successful raid was carried out on the Pimnapra police station. Martial law was clamped down on 25 October and on 27 October, the armed forces stormed the volunteer headquarters at Vayalar near Shertalai after A veritable bloodbath According lo conservative estimates, at least 800 people were killed in this rather short-lived Punnapra-Vayalar uprising.

If Punnapra-Vayalar was short-lived, Telengana, lasting from July 1946 to October 1951, provided the classic example of protracted communist-led peasant guerrilla war. The uprising began on 4 July 1946 when the henchmen of one of the biggest and most oppressive Telangana landlords killed a village militant, Doddi Komarayya in Jangaon taluka of Nalgonda district who had been trying to defend a poor washer-woman's small piece of land. Spreading from the Jangaon, Suryapet and Huzurnagar talukas of Nalgonda, the flames of peasant resistance soon engulfed the neighbouring Warangal and Khammam districts.

Armed guerrilla squads began to take shape from early 1947 in the face of brutal repression. The struggle reached its zenith between August 1947 and September 1948. At its peak, the Telengana uprising covered three million people in 3,000 villages spread over 16,000 square miles. There were 10,000 village defence volunteers and 2,000 regular squad members. Like Tebhaga, Telengana too had a high degree of women's participation which made a significant contribution to the movement's overall impact. In his account of the Telengana struggle, P Sundarayya, who was one of its key leaders, has described the great emancipating and multi-dimensional impact of the movement particularly in the liberated areas, ranging from implementation of basic land reforms and betterment in the conditions of the rural poor to improvement in the status of women and spread of progressive social and cultural values. But most importantly, Telengana pulsated with a tremendous revolutionary spirit and symbolised the first major and comprehensive application of revolutionary communist strategy in India.

Telengana also held an accurate mirror to the actual nature of the transition that took place in 1947. While an oppressed peasantry continued to fight for thoroughgoing land reforms and complete overthrow of feudalism without which a predominantly agricultural country like India could never have real freedom, the Congress government banned the Communist Party and rushed in its army to quell the rebellion in September 1948. According to a conservative estimate at least 4,000 communist fighters and peasant militants were killed in the course of the Telengana uprising and at least another 10,000 subjected to indescribable physical torture, many of whom eventually succumbed to death.

Having already allowed the country to be partitioned on communal lines, the “Iron Man” of modern India, Sardar Patel embarked on his mission to integrate a partitioned India. The powerful State People's Movement and uprisings like Punnapra-Vayalar and Telengana had already shaken the foundation of the 600-odd princely states Patel completed the job of integrating these states by offering lucrative privy purses to the “dispossessed” princes. Several members of this princely tribe were also respectfully accommodated in the emerging dispensation of power and privileges as Governors, Ministers and “Dignitaries” with diverse designations.